//------------------------------// // Alternate Universe Chapter 11 - by Midnight Shadow // Story: The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// The crux of Celestia's pursuit of newfoal Lillian Fogarty is the terrible danger that a new, inexperienced, uncontrolled alicorn would represent. Essentially a god unable to control its powers, Lillian The Alicorn could, with but a single uncontrolled, undisciplined thought, destroy both universes of Mundis and Equestria, killing everyone, everywhere, forever and ever. To not immediately contain or eliminate her would be the greatest possible crime against all life... and indeed reality itself. John Norris finds a strange sort of happy-ending-for-everyone solution in last-minute shotgun surgery. But... what if he had failed? What if Lillian The Alicorn had achieved her full power and become a true, immortal, all-powerful alicorn god after all? Bereft of self-control, flooded with emotions and desires, uncontrolled, undisciplined and determined to survive at any cost, what actually would be the outcome of this worst-case, catastrophic scenario? The exquisitely brilliant and superior Midnight Shadow offers us a powerful and disturbing look at an alternate universe where Lillian Fogarty of Surrey is not stopped from rising to wild and uncontrolled godhood, and instead achieves apotheosis. Lillian Fogarty, full fledged alicorn, equal to Celestia and Luna, but possessed of all the cunning and cleverness that a hunter-gatherer primate, the apex predator of earth is about to be unleashed upon two universes in.... CODE MAJESTE Δ Alternate Universe Version By Midnight Shadow 11. Doctor My Eyes The following is an alternative chapter eleven to CODE: MAJESTE which has a very different outcome. Doctor, my eyes Tell me what is wrong Was I unwise to leave them open for so long... - Jackson Browne Celestia had done... something to John Norris's vault. She had insisted; despite John's assurances that nothing could possibly enter or exit the high security chamber. Apparently there were 'other directions' beyond the ones that were known to Man, and these had to be sealed off if John were to have his ten minutes with the small, gray pretender to the throne. John had carefully put up a small fuss; in reality he relished the thought of free additional protection for his three billion, four hundred million Equestrian bits, all stacked in neat piles or packaged in tidy crates. It had once crossed his mind to simply spread the tiny, featureless golden coins out as one mass and swim through them; the Scrooge McDuck moment had passed quickly, but it had still made him briefly smile. There were other items in his private security vault as well, of course; assorted relics from the history of his family, a few not entirely legal treasures that should, rightfully, exist not in private hands but in a museum, and his father's small but rather excellent gun collection. One corner held a chest from an ancestor taken by the sea, back when the oceans lived and men sailed upon it; the chest itself was a fortune even had it not held priceless relics of a less than savory member of a more adventurous time. The chest itself was buried under a mass of ancient netting and glass ball fishing floats that still smelled of salt; for all John knew, they might have been used for the very last catch, before the end of fish. John's vault held many treasures and wonders besides Equestrian bits; now it held perhaps the strangest rarity of all; the accidental alicorn who had once been Lillian Fogarty of Surrey, Northamerizone. Celestia had been less than happy at John's wish to speak with the alicorn; she had reminded him that she had the prerogative to erase the memories of all involved, especially him; that whatever he expected to learn could not be retained, and that all this would do is prolong the inevitable. She thought him cruel for this, but he had insisted, arguing that the alicorn had become his client too; she had turned to him and begged for his help when she had been transported in a burst of light to the center of his large living space. He had instantly agreed to represent her, and demanded full rights to do so. In the end, it was Celestia's regal sister, Luna that had intervened; she had insisted that because the alicorn was a newfoal, it was proper that she have council from her own world and that in the end, it was a kindness. Besides, as long as the vault were secured properly in the higher spaces, even should her ring be removed, she would not escape before action could be taken; the alicorn had been contained, and the chase was now over. Celestia had seemed sad; she seemed regretful about the entire situation, and had given in to her sister, thus it was that John Norris now found himself inside his vault, facing the back of a softly whimpering gray alicorn, with ten minutes - to the second - allotted to speak with her, in private. "Lillian. My name is John Norris. I am here to try to help you. We have only ten minutes, and I do not know what the hell I am doing, and I have no idea whether the plan inside my head is brilliant or just fucking insane. But I do have an idea, and if you want, we can try it. In any case, in..." John checked his watch; he was old fashioned and had not had a permatech timepiece installed into the flesh of his forearm. "...nine minutes and twenty...two seconds, that door is going to open and Celestia is going to do something about you, and according to the rumors I have heard, it probably isn't pleasant." The small gray alicorn sniffed and looked back, over her wing at him. "She will crystallize me. Turn me to stone. That's what she does with things she can't deal with. That is her 'compassionate' equivalent to execution. Celestia won't kill, but she will imprison. I learned that... and a lot of other things... just a while ago." The alicorn turned her head back and looked at her hooves. Her ears drooped. "I do not want the living death of being crystallized, John. I would rather die than have that happen. It would probably actually be better if I died; being turned to stone is not as permanent as Celestia would like to believe. It can fail sometimes, and whatever is done with me, it needs to be permanent. I really am the threat to both worlds that Celestia has probably claimed to you." John was in the back of his vault, rummaging for the items he required. "She described you as a threat to both worlds. She said you could melt the sky and destroy all human and ponykind." The key wasn't working on the locked cabinet; fortunately the cabinet was old and it never did lock effectively; one more reason it was in the vault, far from his son, Azure. John gave the thing a kick; the ancient plastic and metal door popped open. "I'm afraid it's true. Without this ring, I could easily become a threat worse than Discord." "Who?" John couldn't keep up with all the pony stuff his son brought home from school. The history of one planet was bad enough, two was just gilding the chronological lily. "Think of me as a living, hypernuclear bomb. That is what I am. The ring on my horn might as well be the fuse." John looked desperately around; he needed something small, but not too small, and it had to be smooth, and biologically neutral. "More like a nuclear grenade, then. Pull the ring and give you a toss, is that it?" Lillian laughed. It was actually a sweet sound, despite the terrible situation. "Yup, that's me. Only when I blow up, all sides lose." Lillian's voice changed; it was no longer jovial. "John, I'm scared." "So am I, Lillian. So am I; Celestia's going to have me gelded however this turns out. I'm really going to miss my balls; we've been really close for years." This made the alicorn laugh again, which was nice. John checked his watch: seven minutes and thirty-six seconds. Balls. Ah! John took some of the spherical, hollow glass floats from the ancient fishing net piled over the old trunk. Glass was just silicon; it was mostly neutral, it was smooth, and the floats came in a multitude of sizes. John picked out several of the smallest ones and made his way back. By some unearthly luck, Lillian the alicorn still sat with her back to him, facing away. Currently she was playing with her hooves, as if she were trying to memorize what it felt like to be able to move them. "Lillian... I need you to trust me. And to answer a few questions for me. We have to work fast, we don't have a lot of time left. It would be better if you... didn't turn around either, OK?" John tried to load the cartridges as quietly as he could, but there was no avoiding the loud clack. "You can't die, right?, that's why Celestia plans on turning you to stone." "Before I landed on that building, I was shot by some humans. They blew out my side. But it healed. Actually, I made it heal in an instant. But it would have healed on its own. I could be blown to pieces and the bits would crawl or teleport back and form me again. No, I cannot be killed." Lillian hung her head very low; there was no escape for her, not even death. "You're sure of that, really sure of that?" John had the sawed-off shotgun ready. He placed it at his feet, where he was crouching. He carefully placed the glass floats on stacks of bits; the curious hollow sound of them caused Lillian to instinctively turn to see what had made such a strange sound. She stared at the hollow, clear spheres. "John, what on earth are you up to?" Lillian goggled at the floats, she had no idea what they were. Fishing had ended forever long before she had been born. "What are these for? They're kind of pretty." And they were, like big glass soap bubbles, they shimmered in the vault lights. Five minutes, sixteen seconds. "Listen, Lillian - I managed to learn something from Celestia. I kind of tricked it out of her. There's this thing inside your head, she called it a carbuncle. It's what makes you an alicorn. It's the problem here. If you didn't have it, you would be a normal pony." John put a hand on Lillian's back, feeling her soft, warm coat. He brushed it gently, trying to comfort her. "You can't die, you just grow back. So does the carbuncle. Eventually the carbuncle undergoes a change, and then you do too, and when that happens..." "I will become like Celestia, John." A tear rolled down Lillian's cheek. "Only I won't be able to control my power. With a stray thought, I might destroy the world. I understand why Celestia has to do what she is doing. I really do." "I learned that if something blocks the space the carbuncle needs, it won't grow back." John waited just a moment for that to sink in. In that moment, he noticed something that surprised him very much indeed. The glass floats were doing just that; floating, just above the stack of Equestrian coins. The transparent spheres were bobbing as if they were immersed in some invisible sea. There was no glow around them, as would be the case if a unicorn were levitating them. They simply hung in the air the way that ordinary objects never did. "Are you doing that, Lillian?" John gave one of the floats an experimental poke with his finger. It felt like prodding a superconductor hovering over a maglev plate. Lillian turned her head to look towards John, but noticed the glass balls immediately. "No. Not consciously, anyway." She thought for a moment. "My ring feels warm. On my forehead. Would you check it?" The alicorn sounded even more frightened. John moved Lillian's cornsilk mane away with one hand and looked at the base of her horn. The silver ring appeared strangely rusted, as though it were not silver, but iron. John brought his other hand in to touch the ring, then thought better of it and pulled his hand back. "The ring is... it's not good. It looks like it's disintegrating. Slowly, but... it's falling apart." Grains of corrupted metal were flaking off as John watched. It was starting to look like a stomach tablet dissolving in water. "I don't think we have..." John checked his watch again "... five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Your fuse is going to go off before that, I think" Lillian turned her head suddenly and forcefully away. She stared straight ahead, her back rigid. "John, do whatever it is you think you can do. You can't kill me, and right now I don't care if you hurt me, if there is any chance at all do it. Otherwise get Celestia in here immediately. I need to... not think of anything, anything at all. Hurry!" John picked up the shotgun. It was an old, shiny black Benelli Super Vinci comfortech, 12-gauge, top of the line. Shame his old man had sawed the damn thing off. Unaltered, it would have been a masterpiece. Then again, for what John needed it for, it was, as Benelli had once advertised itself, perfect. "Lillian, I'm not a surgeon, but then we couldn't take you to a hospital or a veterinarian or whatever in any case so...." "Shh." Lillian was clearly struggling, more objects in the vault were now hanging in space; a cloud of bits was orbiting each other like some vastly complex alien star-system, or a magical orrery. That such marvelous synchronization could occur from the alicorn's unconscious, behind her and absent from her vision and concentration was both wondrous and somewhat terrifying. "Just do it. Quickly!" The ring on Lillian's head was red now, like melting metal. It made hissing and squeaking noises as the metal strained against the titanic forces opposing it. There was no time for niceties any more. John didn't like guns; that was his old man's thing. If he could solve something without a gun, John would always choose just that. He never carried; it was insulting to him to feel that he could not think his way out of any predicament, rather than having to resort to force. But that did not mean he could not use a gun. His military father had insisted on that, and there was no practical way to tell the gruff man 'no' on much of anything. John quickly put on the earplugs he had taken, into his ears. Lillian... she wouldn't need earplugs. Four minutes, three seconds. But the ring on Lillian's head looked like things could go tits-up at any moment. John briefly wondered what being destroyed by a mad god would be like. Not fun, he decided. There was nothing for it. John raised the Benelli and aimed it at the back of Lillian's head. Right between her ears, slightly lower down, where the base of her horn would be, on the other side. He angled the short barrel to around 45 degrees. Suddenly he thought more clearly, and quickly sat, tailor-fashion on the floor. He didn't want to end up ass-over-teakettle from the kickback. John braced himself and re-aimed. The ring was sending up sparks, now; it must be burning the poor filly. Lillian let out a soft gasp. There was no other option but Celestia's living death in stone. There probably wasn't time enough even for that, now. A single tear rolled down Jonathan Norris's cheek. He pulled the trigger. The multiverse is a strange place, when it comes down to it. Free will is, through the power of everything being able to happen somewhere, somewhen, entirely assured. In one universe, John's mad idea may have worked. The thought that he could not outwit but maybe outmaneuver a god was, in hindsight, folly, but it must have had a chance. Lillian, on the almost-inaudible signal of John readying himself, turned her head on her long, sinuous neck. John's aim, up until that moment straight and true, went wide. The shot, which would in all probability have taken off the back of her head, merely destroyed her horn. And the remains of the inhibitor ring. "Oh crap." John remained quite still, sighting up the barrels of his sawn-off shotgun as the gently-weeping grey alicorn somehow changed. She turned, blood and bone reforming as he watched, her shattered horn forming out of pure nothing and elongating far beyond the normal unicorn length of a few scant inches. The goddess lunged, flowing from sitting to upon all four hooves, standing proud above the now-cowering human, her horn piercing the skin of his forehead. "You shot me." she said. "I... I... you said..." Lillian, or what used to be Lillian Fogarty, lifted her head as if tasting the wind before turning her head back to John. She gazed deep into his eyes, "I thank you, mortal, but shouldst thou raise again such arms as these against any of my kind, be assured, human, that such action would be thy last." And then she was gone. The clap of sound as the alicorn vacated the vault rang in his ears, even louder than the gunshot. The lights went out, the air conditioning shorted and John wet himself. All in all, he reasoned, if there were ever a time he needed a cigarette, this would be it. *** The shot rang out. Almost instinctively Lillian folded spacetime around herself like a blanket. She was an immortal goddess, something deep in her bones knew that, but it didn't mean she no longer feared death or pain. No, those reflexes were far too well buried deep in her to be expunged by a mere few days of interrupted and damped god-hood. She eyed the shot as the cloud sped towards her, they seemed to hang in space, sliding like... she laughed to herself. She'd once won a competition, as a child, to go bowling at a bona fide bowling club. To all intents and purposes, this was as if... as if the ten pins were sliding towards the bowling ball. She would allow it, she decided. She turned her head, the irritating, burning, glowing ring of metal which had so far kept her true self in check was a nuisance, like a burrowing tick or a blood-sucking mosquito. With the right angle, and the excess swept away to prevent undue pain, the shot would take care of her little inhibitor ring problem. She would lose her horn, maybe lose some blood, tear her skin. This was of no import. The issue would be that once the ring was gone, Celestia would know, but without the ring being gone, Lillian could do nothing to stop the terrible 'justice' that the elder alicorn would mete out. Intolerable, Lillian could see that now, it was intolerable. She was a god, an equal, the alpha and the omega. She was not some... petty doll to be toyed with and then put away in a stone-shaped box for an eternity. Part of her mind was screaming, thrashing, hammering on walls that her id had thrown up in its own decision to enact her continued existence and therefore her survival. That part of her mind was, to all intents and purposes, silenced. It was no longer needed, it was the remnants of her human self. It was vain, stupid, petty, petulant, greedy... it could be negotiated with. Needs must. The shot tore into the scalp of her muzzle, shattered her horn, and blew the red-hot and now ineffectual inhibitor ring into dust. Faster than the pain, faster than the thought itself, reality crystallized around her. All of creation, from birth to death of a universe, lay open to her. Her mind sported out amongst the cold, hard cosmos, and cavorted with the creation of suns, languished and slid amongst the tidal eddies of supermassive black holes, rejoiced with the music of the spheres itself. Her awareness blossomed like a rose, enveloping the small room her body found itself in, and analyzed it in every detail. She snarled, in that moment of time that she bid stretch before her until she would will it otherwise, as exploration revealed that she was locked in. She could not go up, down, left, right, sideways, in, out, contrariwise nor wither and non. Infuriating. No, no, not infuriating. It was a game, a puzzle. She was a god, anger was surely for lesser creatures than her. There was one direction left. She smiled to herself and Looked. Yes, yes, there it was. So simple. She would allow time to return to normal, before she left she would have to impress upon the creature who had decided to do her a favour how much she disagreed with such heavy-handed and violent tactics, despite the outcome. The means do not, she reasoned, justify the ends. Time began again. She turned, "You shot me," she said. *** Celestia paced back and forth, long having tuned out the babbling from the lovable - for she truly loved all her subjects, even ones so enthusiastic as Azure the young pegasus. Luna could deal with him, she had bigger fish to fry, as the humans said. She sniffed, fish may not be intelligent but eating them seemed rather... well no, cruel was the wrong word. Crude? Her ponies, she knew, sometimes ate fish and other forms of protein from animals, especially the newfoals, but rarely and without gusto... she mentally stomped a hoof. Wittering away to herself like some old nag. She was worried, that was it, worried what that thrice-damned human was doing in that ridiculous cubby-hole of a vault with the greatest threat to life, the universe and everything since Discord. Her hackles raised at an unseen signal. She glanced at Luna and saw her younger sibling had felt it too. Luna bowed, "Do as thou must, sister, but I weep for the youngest member of our family, even as thou endeth her short reign." "I take no pleasure in this, Luna, but you know what she is capable of." "As am I, as are you. I beg you... find a way?" Celestia shook her head, "There is none, not now. The ring... That damned fool human, they know not what they do." Luna smiled, even as she felt the growing power. She turned to the motionless Azure, caught in a moment he would not experience, and nuzzled him softly, "Ever it is thus with our children. Forgive them." "I do, I hope they will forgive me." Celestia vanished. *** John sat in the darkness, feeling the warmth spread down his crotch. He was glad there were no cameras and no witnesses. He breathed heavily, "Shit." There was another clap of sound and a glowing figure appeared in the center of the room. She stood proud on all four hooves, horn glowing, wings furled. "You disappoint me, John." John trembled. He'd upset his parents many times when he was a child, he'd upset teachers and police, and bosses... but never, ever, had he felt such a palpable wave of displeasure expressed in so few words. He was, he reasoned, glad to be sitting down. The question would be how he would get up. "You mewling, pompous, self-absorbed, duplicitous wretch! Do you know what you have done?" John smiled weakly, "I think I fucked up." he glanced down at the shotgun in his lap, he could see it now in the golden light from the alicorn's horn. It had one cartridge left. It would probably hurt less than whatever the princess had in store for him. Celestia narrowed her eyes, "No, John, that's not something I'll let you do. Whatever deal you think we had, it's off. Be glad I do not seek reparations, for you could not afford it, not with all the wealth in the world. If I cannot repair this damage, John, there will be no world to repair. Think on that, human, until the end of thy days. Or until I take the memory of this evening with me." John glanced around at the vault, "I'm... sorry, your highness. I've... not done much good with all this, and I thought... what sort of world would I want Azure growing up in, if it were born from the death of an innocent?" Celestia shook her head, tears in her eyes, "I see that world, John, with every waking moment. Go now, go to your son. If... if I cannot stop her, any moment may be your last, and so it may be for every moment everywhere throughout the entirety of your universe. Not for nothing did I try to warn you, human. The sky may boil, the seas burn, the land melt." John sat in his filth and swore. He threw the gun into a corner, where it impacted with a carefully stacked pile of bits, "Then what the blue fuck are you still doing here gabbing with me?" Celestia looked at him, calmly, and for a moment he saw a naked eternity, "You do not understand, be content that you do not." *** Lillian found herself travelling. One moment she had been Lillian, the winged unicorn, sobbing and preparing for a fate worse than death. The next, she was Lillian the goddess. The human mind, even one which has become pony, cannot handle such a thing. She sank into the expanded consciousness and let it dissolve her. Do what's right, she repeated to herself like a mantra, there should be no intended pain, no intended sadness, all that is beautiful in this reality must go on... The part of Lillian which was now a goddess felt great sadness and joy at the same time. The trap had been ingenious, really, and rather thorough, but lacking in one single aspect. She had been unable to move through any of the dimensions, curled up or otherwise, that this reality afforded. She had even been unable to move into hyperspace. For a quintillionth of a second she had thought herself lost, but in that infinitesimally small speck of time, she had her answer. It was ludicrously easy, really. Lillian had been many places upon the earth, but to get there, even through the folds of higher dimensions, had taken linear time. Linear time which no longer meant much to her. She travelled back upon her lifeline, a being of pure energy and magic, no longer held back by the meagre bonds of space nor time. The perfect trap, with a perfect hole so that one pathetic human could converse with a trapped goddess for ten minutes. Within a few non-linear moments, she was free. Her spirit, for lack of a better word, floated. The cold realization of the universe she found herself within burned like pitch. Everywhere she looked were machines made of talking meat, living automatons who would, ever so soon, end their brief exertions upon this mortal coil and cease. The shame and sadness of that fact brought her to tears. The HLF thugs, their irrational hatred was born only of the knowledge, deep down, that the ponies had something they could not accept. She gathered them up. They screamed, this was understandable. She held their patterns and cradled them softly, crooning to them. She knew it hurt, having their living essence captured in a non-euclidean matrix was pain like no other, beyond that of mere birth and separation from the All. She pitied them, they were scared, angry and violent. She would show them, she would give them her gifts. She would show them the Forever Herd. The pile of dead meat which had once been ponies saddened her, too. Lives cut short. Some were Equestrian, most were newfoal. None of them deserved this fate. Celestia had not saved them, but she would. What was time, entropy or death to a goddess? She reached back along their lifelines and snagged their souls. The ethereal ponies screamed, their destination denied. She didn't blame them, they were scared, their final rest was denied. She comforted them as best she could, carried them like children, arms enough to swaddle the world. She travelled further, now, further back. PER, those foolishly misguided souls. She reached out her will, and took them, every single one. She would show them what it meant to be a true pony. Choice? She was a goddess, they were hers, it was her right. She could not stay long, she had to keep travelling. Celestia's eternal eyes were everywhere, and she had been in the PER stronghold, ergo she was still there, forever in that moment. Lillian left. She travelled faster now, though distance and time meant little. She could feel the grasp of the other alicorns closing in. She had to find a way out! She travelled all the way back, to just moments from her awakening on the table. She could stay here, she realized, in this moment. Time was of no import, it could be a million years subjectively. Yes, she would use this atom of hydrogen as a home, make the nucleus her world. Her subjects would find themselves in an unfamiliar existence, but they would make do. With a million years, of a sort, they would have time to get used to it. Lillian latched on to reality, examined the nucleus. Size was as much an illusion as space and time were, since size was just an expression of the one passing through the other. She reached out a hoof, so to speak... and found her will blocked. "Stop." said the voice. "Celestia!" hissed Lillian, and she gathered up her subjects and fled back, further back. The dreamworld blossomed around her, but this time she could see her own proto-self on its endless journey. This had been a mistake. This was Lillian's birth, and it would be her death. This was Equestria, Celestia's domain. She was trapped here now. The ponies around her bowed, flocking to her. As they tasted her essence, some recoiled, some surged against her. She was a princess, to some she was their princess. This was her crime, this was her transgression. She could remake the universe, she realized. Size was, after all, just an illusion. Do what ye will, an' ye harm none. The inner voice rang out, hard and solid. Her ethereal hoof-steps faltered. But... they were meat, weren't they? Hers to play with? Nay, young one, this is the trap of all who tread the path thy find thyself upon. Their brief lives are cold, oft cut short, but they are theirs. Thou shalt not seek to take it from them. The words were... not exactly words, but she recognized the tone, the timbre. "Muffin?" asked Lillian, momentarily startled from her ever-growing fugue of god-hood. Aye, little one, I be the one thou dost dub 'Muffin'. In truth, my name is Luna. I would see my newest sister live, but should she prove to be a base tyrant, I would see her gone from this or any other reality in an instant. Lillian's heart beat hard and fast, which was strange as she did not possess a body. She saw her ghostly self fall under the gaze of Celestia, and felt the goddess move to snuff out that brief candle before it had even formed. Lillian swatted the movement away, and she felt herself wake up on the table, as she had, as she always would. The world formed around her; Equestria, Canterlot, the throne room of the royal pony sisters. Celestia and Luna both sat upon their thrones. Luna gazed hopefully upon Lillian, and Celestia glared like a basilisk. It had been a trap, all along. The only way she could have gone was back, right back here, right to the seat of her adversaries power. "Relinquish thy powers, Lillian." Luna said, softly. "I cannot. You know that." Lillian's eyes teared up, she could never go back. "Then I offer you entombment. An eon, an eternity, and then freedom at the end of time." Celestia said, gaze never faltering. Lillian shook her head, "To sit and wait for forever? No!" "Then I will end you." Celestia stepped forwards, her body glowing with that same otherworldy light as she tapped into the powers of creation itself. "I love my little ponies too deeply to let you subject them to your every whim. I love that cold, hard, senseless universe of man too much to let you crush it and mold it beneath your hooves as some plaything. I love you too much to let you become a monster." "And you think trapping me in stone forever is a gift?" Lillian backed off. She was a goddess, it was true, but she had been one for a very short space of time. "I don't want to be a statue! I, I, I want to live! You can't have me! You won't take me!" Lillian looked for a way out. She could not run. Not left, not right, not up, not down. Nowhere in the realm of Equestria was safe, and she felt the barrier to that other realm that had spawned her close even as her consciousness investigated it. Celestia's light grew bright, brighter, brighter still. The floor began to bubble as the goddess who had seen the birth and death of countless realities brought all of her formidable, impossible power to bear. "No! No! I won't! You can't! It's... so bright! No! NOOOOOOO! THE LIGHT!" Lillian started screaming, her voice shattering the windows, crumbling the walls, cracking the foundations, disturbing the very pillars of the realm itself. It was so hot, so bright, it hurt! It burned! Lillian would flee, she would run, she would... the barrier! That was it! She would hide; not this side of the barrier, not the other, but in the barrier, in that layer between the worlds. She swept her prizes around her like a cloak, comforted them, wept with them. The light was so bright, it hurt, it dissolved her very essence... if only she could avoid it, escape it... The barrier was right there, she leaped for it, fled into it, pulled it up as a shield against that terrible, awful, painful, powerful light. She wrapped it tight around herself, filling the spaces, exerting her will for somewhere to hide to come into existence. She felt the fabric of reality shift, weakened as it was here between the two realms. She made for the rift, squeezed through it, dragging her children with her. She would find peace, a new beginning, somewhere to grow, to feel love, to be - but first... "LET THERE BE DARKNESS!" she cried. And there was darkness. And it was good. After darkness, there would be a need for light. She would have to make light. She would have to make a great many things, but she had time now. She got to work.